Sugary Sweet Treats at the End of the Week

Persian Ghotab, Almond-Filled Cakes

I always love to try new foods, and these cakes/pastries/cookies were certainly fun to make. My old college roommate is Persian, and she loves to make Ghotab with her mom for parties and family get-togethers. It's wonderful how food can remind you of so many traditions and memories. Although, she admitted to me that this recipe from the internet, is better than her mom's.

I plan to reproduce this recipe in my own kitchen some day. But until then, I have no way of knowing exactly how much of any ingredient we added (The dough was too moist so we added more flour then the recipe called for). This makes it pretty much impossible for me to do a nutritional analysis. So, for the time being, I can live in ignorance, and actually enjoy this indulgent, fried dessert!

Ingredients: 
2 egg yolks
½ cup butter
½ cup yogurt
1½ cups flour
2 cups vegetable oil
1 cup confectioners sugar
1 tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt

Filling:
½ cup ground almonds
¼ cup confectioners sugar
1 teaspoon ground cardamom

Procedure: 
Beat the egg yolks, butter, and yogurt until creamy. Stir in the flour gradually, and knead well with the hands. If the dough is sticky, add more flour. Place the dough in a plastic bag and keep it at room temperature for 2 or 3 hours.

For the filling, mix together the almonds, confectioners sugar, and ground cardamom.

Roll out the dough on a floured board to a thickness of ¼ inch. Cut it into circles with a floured cookie cutter. Place a small amount of filling in the middle of each cookie. Fold the edges up, pinch together, and crimp the dough together all along the open side. Heat the cooking oil in a deep saucepan to 375 F. Drop the cookies in and deep-fry until golden brown (3 to 5 minutes). Drain them on paper towels. While still warm, roll them in confectioners sugar. When they are cool, roll them again in confectioners sugar.

Allergens: Egg, milk, nuts, wheat, gluten

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Recipe Re-do: Morning Glory Muffins

 I have a busy week ahead with early start times and lots of demands at work. I have been stressing for days about what breakfast food I can grab and run out the door to make my 7 am start time. Today, I decided to re-make these delicious morning glory muffins, with a few adaptations. I love that these recipes has so many fruits and vegetables, but how many servings does each one have really? Let me break it down... 1 apple - 1 serving 1/2 cup applesauce - .5 serving 3/4 cup raisins - 3.8 servings 6 carrots - 12 servings 8 oz pineapple - 1.4 servings / 18.7 servings per recipe, .6 servings per muffin So, if I have two muffins for breakfast, I'm getting > 1 servings of my fruits and vegetables for the day. It's not great, not terrible. As I said before, I do want to figure out how to add more protein to this - maybe next time I can add some flax seeds or something. Ingredients 1/2 cup spelt flour 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour ½ cups sprouted wheat flour ¾ cup almond flour 1
Read more

The Tortilla Pizza Face-Off Part I

Image
I'm totally on a Mexican Food Kick these past couple months... Mexican Noodles, Mexican Pizza, Mexican Dip... but hey, I will always take advantage of an opportunity to use taco seasoning and tons of fresh vegetables! So when my work today brought me to the CDC recipe database -  http://apps.nccd.cdc.gov/dnparecipe/recipesearch.aspx  - I obviously chose the tortilla pizza to go in the cookbooks we are sending home with students next week after they visit the University Farmer's Market.  And isn't it only fair that I try out some of these recipes first?   And just to make this a little more interesting, I'm going to have a little nutrition face-off with a fellow blogger's Tortilla Pizza recipe - someone who "watches her weight" and tells us how her recipe is full of protein, fiber, calcium, vitamin A and vitamin C. We will see about that!  Skip below for recipes - I'm warning you, I might ramble a bit! Honey What's Cooking Mexican
Read more

Week 18: Mire poix and Winter squash

Image
I couldn't keep up with the weekly posts, but this week seemed like a good week to get back into it. I had winter squash accumulated from multiple weeks - butternut squash, acorn squash, delicata squash, and 2 different types of pumpkin - and I just got a new Blendtec blender, so it seemed good timing to do a squash soup. I halved the pumpkin, delicata and acorn squash and roasted them in the oven at 350 degrees, taking them out one-by-one as they softened up.  All my blanching and freezing these past few months paid off when I had celery and onions, but not carrots. Luckily, I had carrots from August all sliced up in my freezer. I sauteed them in a stockpot with olive oil, until they just started to caramelize.  In the blender, I put 2 cups of chicken broth, the squash, and 1-2 cups of mirepoix. The squash was still hot from the oven, and after 90 seconds of blending it was ready to eat! It was surprisingly sweet, so I may have to add a little cayenne pepper or something to give i
Read more